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Searching for justice, finding no peace

With summer approaching, the rhythm quickens in Bowdoin-Geneva. Violence seems to rise with the heat, but so do a mother’s hopes for her children, and a priest’s quest to connect. Meanwhile, from the weeds, an unlikely garden grows.

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The Rev. Richard “Doc” Conway is one of the priests at St. Peter’s parish in Dorchester. When he arrived, Conway quickly realized that for him and the church to be effective in the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood, he would have to get out and walk the streets, talking to everyone from the old women who sit on their porches to the hardened young men police believe are responsible for the violence.

Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff

The Rev. Richard “Doc” Conway of St. Peter Church put on his clerical collar as he started his evening walk in the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood on July 8.

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Conway met with various Boston police officers and representatives from the Suffolk district attorney's office at the St. Peter Teen Center in October to strategize a response to recent shootings in the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood.

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Conway attended a one-year anniversary memorial service on Aug. 25 for Jaivon Blake, who was shot and killed on Geneva Avenue. At right: Blake's aunt, Stephaney Blake, consoled his brother Kavan Blake, who witnessed the death.

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Conway at the kitchen table on Oct. 10 in the rectory of St. Ambrose church where he lives. There had been several shootings in his parish, one of them fatal, in the previous two weeks. "I'm all funeraled out," he said.